


Tsubame

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 02:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20575007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: High on a mountaintop, a young woman struggles in vain to please her love. Some people become ghosts, and some ghosts become something more.





	Tsubame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).

Snow whipped around the mountain at nearly blinding speeds, the whole sky whirling with living white clouds. It piled in drifts against rocks and trees, all but burying them from view. Where there had once been paths curving around the mountainside there was now only the cold, white blanket of snow. Tsubame stumbled through a drift that was up to her knees, clutching her arms tight as she tried to hold in some measure of warmth. She shouldn’t be out on the mountain at all, much less in a blizzard, but it was the only way. Hajime had promised that they would be wed if she could only bring him proof that she’d been to the top of the mountain. She’d planned to start the journey when the weather cleared, but then he’d told her that he planned to wed another. She was taking too long, and he didn’t want to wait.

It was only because she loved him so very much that she’d left immediately. When you aren’t sure you want to live without someone risking your life seems the least of your concerns. Tsubame fell to her knees against a boulder, shivering from head to toe. In a brief flash of clarity she realized that Hajime had likely never intended to marry her. It was almost laughable, really. So much so that she started to laugh even as her eyelids grew heavy and she slowly slipped away.

By the time a Snorunt found the woman’s still body many hours later she was already half frozen. The blizzard had calmed to a gentle snowfall, and night had long since fallen. Crystals had begun to form on Tsubame’s smooth, pale skin. Her blood had long been turned to slurry, but the expression frozen on her face was a demure and amused smile. Snorunt didn’t quite understand what her motionless body meant. She nudged the body gently, but still it did not move, the woman’s expression unchanged. 

The moon peeked out from behind the shadow of clouds, casting a silvery glow over the shivering ice Pokemon. As the clouds receded further the moonlight spread over the woman’s corpse, sparkling against the crystals on her skin. The sparkles seemed to grow brighter and brighter until they coalesced into Tsubame’s ghostly form. The spirit perched on the boulder above her body, gazing down at the Snorunt bleakly. 

“I did not expect to linger like this,” she whispered, her tone mournful. “I should have moved on to the next life.”

“Snor.” The Snorunt settled down in front of her, drawing in on itself. It had lived on the mountain for all of its life, and this was not the first time it had seen a lonesome specter trying to understand their predicament. She watched the woman with patient eyes, waiting to see if she would do as so many had done with her kin over the years.

The spirit was silent for a long time, but then she began to speak. In hushed tones like a creaking wind she told Snorunt of her love, and how he had sent her to this mountain as a final act of betrayal. She wept tears that turned to snow as they left her eyes, cursing her own foolishness and the man she had so foolishly loved in turn. The clouds shifted as she spoke, alternately casting them in shadow and returning the kiss of moonlight to the scene. When the tale began to come to its close the gentle fall of snow began to pick up speed, beginning to swirl around them. The clouds moved away from the moon once more, and its light fell against the boulder just as a gust of wind swept the snow from its top and revealed a turquoise stone.

Tsubame reached the moment of her death in the story, her words growing still as the vortex of wind and snow around them came to a fever pitch. The stone in the boulder began to glow, brilliant light shining out from its core. The specter closed her eyes as the stone’s light washed over her and Snorunt at once. They both began to glow, quickly becoming brighter than even the moon, connected by the light from the stone. In a sudden explosion of light the snowstorm compacted down upon them and burst outward. Where once there had been a Snorunt and the weeping spirit of a woman, there was now only the eerie figure of a Pokemon whose shape bore striking resemblance to a woman in a kimono.

A Froslass swayed gently in the air, her eyes closed as she took in the shape of her new form. She hummed gently to herself as she moved on the gentled current of the wind, twirling in place like a figure in a music box. Her eyes opened and stared about the mountainside through bright eyes. After a long moment, those eyes fell upon the still human figure beneath her floating body. She stared for what might have been hours, unblinking. 

Finally, the newly evolved Pokemon moved, lifting the body with arms that should have been too long and fragile to be of use. Still, she carried the remnants of what she’d once been further up the mountain to a cave she’d discovered when she was only a Snorunt. She laid the figure at the back of the cave, swaying back to look it over once more. She took a deep breath and blew over the body the same way she remembered blowing out candles as a woman. It became encased with ice, a beautiful, everlasting statue. It was a true treasure, centered in a place of honor in the cave’s depths. With a lift of her head, she continued to blow ice in a sweeping arc across the ceiling of the cave, weaving a delicate decorative web of icicles. More breaths created columns on either side of the figure. She deserved a beautiful home. A statue such as the one she’d made deserved to be displayed in a beautiful place. 

It would not be the last such creation that she would make.


End file.
